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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26851645">Vanilla Dreams</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe'>scioscribe</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Starsky &amp; Hutch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e15 Shootout, Episode: s01e22 A Coffin for Starsky, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Sharing a Bed, Treat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:46:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,017</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26851645</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Insomnia is bad; nightmares are worse.</p><p>Sharing a bed with your partner is a pretty good cure-all, unless being in love with him gets the better of you.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ken Hutchinson/David Starsky</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>70</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Fic In A Box</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Vanilla Dreams</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinShelley/gifts">CousinShelley</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Some problems you didn’t know were going to be problems until they came right up and smacked you in the face.</p><p>Starsky rolled over onto his back and looked up at Hutch’s living room ceiling, forcing himself to notice for maybe the hundredth time that it was a world away from the ceiling of the back room at Giovanni’s. He counted cars going by, their headlights picking out the colors in Hutch’s little window-quilt of stained glass. The lights didn’t do anything when they hit the blue, but the citrusy squares lit up real pretty. Hutch colors, he thought vaguely, buncha shades of gold on gold, kinda summery.</p><p>The things a person thought about at three in the damn morning.</p><p>He turned back on his side. Like after all these hours of flopping around like a fish on a hook, he’d finally found the sweet spot.</p><p>When really, they were all sweet spots. As far as sofas went, you couldn’t ask for better. Another way Hutch’s place was different from Giovanni’s. That couch had been all springs, and they’d prodded at him like they wanted to poke right up through the cushions and get friendly.</p><p>Yep. Nothing like Giovanni’s.</p><p>Back on his back again.</p><p>The smells, too: the smells were different. The back room at Giovanni’s had been all cigar smoke and the couch had been all farts, and it’d all been laid over with the scents out of the kitchen, the simmering red sauce and buttery linguini and fried veal cutlets. Nothing that delicious had ever been allowed to cross Hutch's threshold. The wheat germ in his kitchen would rise up and repel it. Hutch’s house didn’t smell like anything but Hutch. Well, Hutch and plants, but Hutch kinda picked up their scent as part of his own, green and clean, earthy and spicy. All in all, Starsky couldn’t have picked anybody less likely to smell like an Italian restaurant.</p><p>So even with his eyes closed, he should’ve known where he was and where he wasn’t.</p><p>No dice. He might as well have had his eyelids wired open.</p><p>He threw in the towel and sat up. The whole reason he was on Hutch’s couch in the first place was because he’d had a little too much to drink, and sleeping it off had seemed safer than driving home. Well, to hell with it. He’d call a cab, then, and he’d probably sleep like a baby in the backseat and the poor driver would have to shake him awake. He’d owe the guy a gargantuan tip if that happened.</p><p>But paying through the nose for a ride home was better than spending all night on Hutch’s sofa feeling like his heart was pounding so hard it was going to burst.</p><p>He was getting crazy feedback from his nerve endings, like they were still sparking up with that night.</p><p>
  <em>Hutch is out there, and you’re not exactly the best backup right now, are you? Hutch is putting his life on the line, and you can barely throw a pitcher at a wall. Anything could be happening to him, and you wouldn’t have a fucking clue.</em>
</p><p>Bad associations. He just plain had bad associations with being sacked out on a sofa while Hutch was off in another room.</p><p>Maybe going back to his place wouldn’t chase all the ghosts away, but it would at least get him off the damn sofa.</p><p>He was ready to slip out the door—he’d even gotten it open—when the lights came on behind him.</p><p>“Starsk?” Hutch’s voice was hoarse, thick with sleep.</p><p>Starsky shut the door and turned around, feeling sheepish and somehow <em>caught</em>, like—</p><p>Like sneaking out in the middle of the night was as much a neon sign for cowardice as wanting a security blanket.</p><p>Or like sneaking out in the middle of the night was sneaking out in the middle of the night, period, and so it was a scummy move no matter why you were doing it. Which didn’t make any sense.</p><p>But that was the least of his worries. Because—God, Hutch. Silhouetted in his bedroom door, all lit up from the back, Blondie looked like he was all harsh angles, like he’d been chipped out with an ax, and Starsky could suddenly see that he’d never quite gotten back up to whatever weight he’d been before Forest, before the heroin. Things were concave that should have been convex, unless he had the words the wrong way around. And to top it all off, Hutch had his gun in his hand. At his side, at least, but grabbing your gun instead of your alarm clock when you woke up wasn’t the best sign.</p><p>He could handle this; <em>they </em>could handle this. “It’s all right. I’m just gonna turn the lights on over here, okay, Blintz?” He waited until he got a nod before he did it.</p><p>The warmer lighting chased away some of the shadows and reassured Starsky that Hutch wasn’t exactly down to skin and bones—though he could still do with a couple of meals that would actually stick to his ribs for a change—but it didn’t do anything about the gun in his hand and the haggard look on his face.</p><p>“Oh, babe,” Starsky said softly. “I didn’t mean to wake you up. Everything’s fine. And I got nothing for you to shoot, unless there are some paper targets around here I don’t know about.”</p><p>“Shoot?” It took a second for Hutch to look down at the gun in his hand, and then a pink flush crept across his face. He muttered, “Reflex,” under his breath and put it down on the table. He rubbed his now free hand across his face, and when it came away, he looked a little more awake, like a guy who actually knew where he was.</p><p>Funny how not knowing that was going around.</p><p>Hutch had been sleeping in just some drawstring pants, navy ones with pale blue pinstripes. Like day standing around dressed as night.</p><p>“Where were you going?” Hutch said. Now there was a little catch in his voice, something Starsky couldn’t make any sense of.</p><p>“Was just gonna head home.” He shrugged. “Since I’m awake and all.”</p><p>“At three in the morning?”</p><p>“Three in the morning’s as good as any other time if you’re awake for it,” Starsky said, trying to sound philosophical. Hell, trying to feel philosophical, instead of like he was running scared.</p><p>Hutch rubbed his eyes again. “You know what kind of cabs you get at three in the morning? You ever looked up close at the backseat of one of those, Starsky?”</p><p>Yeah. He knew there were things there he didn’t necessarily want to sit down in. But he also didn’t want to spend the whole night thinking he was still in the back room, on that sofa—</p><p>Sofa. Hey, there was an idea. Maybe a dumb one, but an idea. Maybe it was just the sofa that was getting his head all turned around, and if he slept sitting up, in one of Hutch’s screwy Danish armchairs, he’d be cool as a cucumber. He brightened.</p><p>“You make a good point,” he said, shedding his jacket again. He watched some of the tension go out of Hutch’s shoulders as he did it. “I don’t want to catch no cab diseases. Hey—you always come into your living room guns blazing?”</p><p>“Only when I’ve got miscreants camped out on my sofa.”</p><p>“Hey,” Starsky said. He tried on an offended-sounding bluster. “I’m no miscreant.”</p><p>“Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck—”</p><p>“No duck either. Ducks got bills.” He tapped his mouth. “I got lips.”</p><p>“I noticed,” Hutch said.</p><p>It took him a second—a hot second, a second that dried out his mouth—for him to realize what Hutch meant. “Sure, maybe I flap my gums too much, but at least I’m interesting.”</p><p>He loved the little smile Hutch got at times like this, when he was amused even though he’d never admit it. “Who told you that?”</p><p>“People,” Starsky said confidently. “People who’ve got the good taste to know I’m a fascinating conversationalist.”</p><p>He waited for Hutch to tell him about the gun, about what the hell he’d thought could be happening out in his living room, like an uprising of the plants, but Hutch didn’t. Maybe tonight wasn’t the night for it.</p><p>He had one more try at it, though—real gently this time. “You must be a light sleeper, though, waking up just because I opened the door.”</p><p>“At least this time I <em>was </em>asleep,” Hutch said. He looked like the wrong words had come out, and, even more than that, like he could have choked the life out of them for it. Starsky recognized that particular breed of Hutch’s anger, and he didn’t like it at all: it was bitter and steamy as black coffee and Hutch only ever got that way about himself. Not that it wouldn’t burn you too if you got too close to it.</p><p>“Trouble with that lately?”</p><p>“Why, do you want to make me some warm milk?”</p><p>He would if he thought it would work. He didn’t say anything, though, and Hutch finally said:</p><p>“Yeah. Insomnia. For a while now.”</p><p>Insomnia <em>for a while now</em>, and Starsky had woken him up in the middle of his first good night’s sleep in who knew how long just because he’d been too antsy to sleep on the couch. If he couldn’t settle down for the rest of the night in the chair, he was just going to tough it out. Nobody ever had a heart attack from thinking they were in an Italian restaurant.</p><p>“Think you’ll be able to fall back asleep?”</p><p>Hutch said, “Are you staying?” Like instead of question and answer it was supposed to be question and question.</p><p>“Yeah,” Starsky said firmly.</p><p>“Yeah,” Hutch said. “I think I will. Just—don’t open the front door.”</p><p>“I’ll be quiet as a little church mouse. Those are quiet, right?”</p><p>Hutch didn’t exactly smile, but his mouth started looking softer. “I think it depends on the denomination.”</p><p>“Well, I’ll be quiet as a synagogue mouse, then. Never heard a peep out of any of ours growing up.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Hutch said quietly. “That sounds good, Starsk. And I’ll just—know everything’s okay out here.” There was the tiniest twist to those last words, like Hutch was ramping up to some serious bitterness again—and for God’s sake, why?—but then it dissipated, and all he did was say good night.</p><p>He left the door open, funnily enough, and he left it open more than a crack, like it was deliberate and not just him slipping up on closing it all the way. Starsky had slept on Hutch’s couch too many times to count over the years, and he didn’t remember Hutch ever sleeping with his door open. And it didn’t seem like a habit anybody would want to start when the slightest noise could wake them up, did it?</p><p>Starsky started over there to close it, but then he hesitated.</p><p>He could see the shape of Hutch in the dark, the slightly bowed curve of Hutch’s back in the bed. And it was—good. It was good to know that Hutch was there, still breathing—that no trigger-happy hitman had decided to put a few holes in him. It wouldn’t be like Giovanni’s. If something were happening to Hutch now, he’d hear it, and he’d be able to do something about it. He wouldn’t wind up down on the floor trying his hardest to get somewhere a day late and a dollar short.</p><p>Okay. Door stayed open.</p><p>He turned the lights off again and practically tiptoed over to the armchair. He wasn’t going to wake Hutch up <em>again</em>.</p><p>He’d been with Hutch when Hutch had bought this chair. By now he couldn’t even remember what they’d been in the store for in the first place, just that he’d been the one to clock the Danish chair. It looked arty enough and had that fancy overseas design pedigree—at least if you were going to believe the saleswoman—that Hutch had shelled out for it without Starsky having to say a single thing about how he’d figured it would be good for Hutch’s back.</p><p>Their salad days, back then. Now, if they went chair-shopping together, Starsky could just say that he liked the ones that looked like Hutch could sit in them without feeling like his spine had rusted up on him. They could say stuff like that now. Back then, they’d still been stepping along some kind of dance pattern, following printed-out footsteps: this was what you noticed about your partner, this was what you did, this was what you cared about. (And you didn’t mother-hen him.) They hadn’t learned how to just <em>be</em>.</p><p>Now—now, they could say anything to each other. Maybe he wasn’t bawling his heart out to Hutch about his newfound fear of couches, but he knew he could have if he’d really wanted to.</p><p>The chair smelled like Hutch, same as the sofa. It was nice.</p><p>He guessed that was the one thing he couldn’t talk about—how nice that was. But that wasn’t important. In the grand scheme of things, that was nothing.</p><p><em>Nothing </em>had kept him up on a couple of other nights. But not this one. He was out like a light.</p><p>***</p><p>“What are you trying to do?” Starsky had said earlier that night, laughing as Hutch practically sprinted to the kitchen to get him another beer. “Get me drunk and take advantage of me?”</p><p>Hutch had stood in front of the fridge for a few long extra seconds, letting it cool down the rush of blood to his face. By the time he’d turned around, beer in hand, he must have looked normal enough.</p><p>Thank God for the refrigerator. He’d needed it—because really, the answer to Starsky’s question had been yes. Yes, Hutch was trying to get him drunk to take advantage of him, when it came right down to it.</p><p>Albeit not the way Starsky meant. Then again, it wasn’t like Starsky actually meant that in the first place: that was just more wishful thinking on Hutch’s part.</p><p>Hutch passed him the beer. “Yep. Unless you try to open that on the edge of the table again, then you’re getting your ass kicked out into the road.”</p><p>Starsky grinned and found the church key, plying it against the bottlecap. “Gotta obey the house rules.”</p><p>That one ought to do it, Hutch thought clinically, watching as Starsky drank. Starsky sucked at the tops of his beer bottles when the two of them were alone, and he did it <em>enthusiastically</em>. He had manners enough not to do it in public, at least, but he seemed to think the rules didn’t have to hold when they were only in each other’s company. He could give free rein to his sloppy, exuberant bad habits; he could play with his drink the way a kid might play with his food. Watching him wrap his mouth around the lip of the bottle, Hutch really, really wished he’d drawn a line in the sand about that a long time ago. Starsky’s lips were shiny-wet.</p><p>Good thing this drink would be the one to tip Starsky over into being too drunk to drive home, really. Hutch didn’t know if he could have lived through another one of these little performances.</p><p>“As far as getting you drunk goes, we’re off tomorrow anyway.” Weaselly self-justification. “It’s not like it matters.”</p><p>Starsky stretched out. “Not so long as you don’t mind me sleeping on your sofa.”</p><p>Jackpot. Hutch shrugged. “Never have before.”</p><p>He wanted Starsky under his roof for the night—all wishful thinking aside—because he suspected it was the one thing that could finally help him sleep. If it didn’t, he’d be left with sedatives, and he didn’t want to go down that road. There were already hours, at least, where he felt like he was walking on the edge of a knife, one slip away from being right back where Forest had left him—and sedatives weren’t even a slip, they were a hell of a push. Starsky, though. Starsky was nothing like that. Starsky was a lifeline. Not a fix but a <em>cure</em>.</p><p>Even if none of his restlessness had had anything to do with Starsky, Hutch would still have wanted his company anyhow. But under the circumstances, he was desperate for it.</p><p>The trouble had started when Starsky had come home from the hospital. All of a sudden, Hutch’s nights had turned unbearable.</p><p>At first he’d had this kind of thin, dishwater-gray sleep, and every passing car had woken him up. He had leftover vigilance but no vigil. Then, when he’d finally gotten too tired for his mind to go on tricking his body, he’d fallen into something deeper—and drowned in it. God, the dreams. In them, he was back in Giovanni’s, and every time he tried to go see Starsky, someone stopped him. Sometimes he could hear noises coming from the back room, groans of pain or even Starsky calling for him, but he couldn’t fucking get there. If the goons didn’t stop him, the floor did, latching around his feet like quicksand.</p><p>The scenery changed, but the substance didn’t. Sometimes he was back in Forest’s shooting gallery. Sometimes he was at his desk, and he knew the ringing phone was Starsky trying to get to him, but he couldn’t answer it.</p><p>But he was always one place and Starsky was always another.</p><p>Well, this was at least one night where that wouldn’t be the case, as long as he could get his mind to accept the reality that Starsky was right there. As long as that was enough to keep himself from slingshotting back and forth between the alertness and the nightmares.</p><p>It had been. Compared to all those nights of hell, getting woken up by Starsky trying to sneak out the door was nothing.</p><p>Hutch slept until the sun coming through his blinds was too much to be ignored, and then he stretched without getting up or opening his eyes. The golden lassitude of the morning felt like a luxury, one he could experience only because he’d finally gotten some rest. He felt almost frisky. Starsky blew any other good luck charm out of the water.</p><p>Starsky. Hutch opened his eyes, the facts of last night falling into place. Why the hell had Starsky been ready to leave at three o’clock in the morning? He’d said it was just because he happened to be up, but it seemed like such a screwball plan, even for him—what, take a cab back to his place and then another one back to Hutch’s in the morning? Why go to all the trouble? Maybe he’d felt sober enough by then to take his car—but then he could have just said so.</p><p>
  <em>With you waving a gun in his face?</em>
</p><p>He winced. That wasn’t exactly accurate, but it was close enough. What good was it being hypervigilant about your partner if you almost shot him for making the wrong noise in the night?</p><p>Starsky deserved some kind of apology for it all. Hutch would ply him with the biggest, greasiest hangover breakfast he could scrounge up at short notice.</p><p>Starsky deserved an explanation, too, but that was harder to come by. Starsky had bled at Giovanni’s; he’d come close to dying. Hutch hated to turn around and complain that <em>he </em>was having nightmares about it. It felt almost grotesquely selfish to ask Starsky to shell out comfort for him when Starsk was the one it had all happened to in the first place.</p><p>Guess he’d have to hope the breakfast would do the trick.</p><p>When he came out of the bedroom—all ready to lay his humble sacrifice down on the altar of Starsky’s hunger—he stopped short, bemused.</p><p>“How’d you end up in the chair?” he said out loud.</p><p>Starsky made a snuffling noise, his chin coming up off his chest. “Huh?” He winced as he straightened up. “What? What are you waking me up for? I thought it was our day off.”</p><p>“It is. I was going to offer you breakfast.”</p><p>“Offer it to me when I’m awake.” Starsky turned to the side, nuzzling his cheek against the back of the chair. “And make it night again.”</p><p>“But what are you doing in the <em>chair</em>, is what I want to know.”</p><p>“Don’t like couches anymore.” He was mumbling, still only about half-awake. “I like chairs now. Chairs never did anything to me.”</p><p>“What did couches ever—”</p><p>He broke off there, suddenly cold and feeling a little sick to his stomach.</p><p>What had couches ever done to Starsky? Well, he’d been lying on one for hours with a bullet in his back, too weak to even stand up. No wonder he’d had his fill of it.</p><p>And Hutch hadn’t even thought about it before doing all that maneuvering last night. He’d needed Starsky close to chase his own nightmares away, and he’d let it make him forgetful. He glowered at the sofa, like it should have said something to him.</p><p>“Aw, buddy.” Hutch didn’t even mean to put his hand on Starsky’s head, not consciously; he just blinked and it was there, and then it seemed wrong to move it. “I wasn’t thinking. Come on, move into the bedroom, at least. You deserve a few more hours where you’re actually lying down.”</p><p>Starsky straightened up, rubbing his eyes with his fists. “What?” He sounded genuinely confused. “What do you mean? I’m fine.”</p><p>“You’ll hurt your back.”</p><p>“You’re the one with the bad back, grandpa, not me.”</p><p>Hutch rolled his eyes. “Your <em>shoulder</em>. You’re still healing.”</p><p>Starsky waved off the idea like it was a gnat. “I’m back at work, ain’t I? I can sleep in a chair if I want to.”</p><p>“But you <em>don’t </em>want to,” Hutch said, wondering how he kept winding up in these situations where he was annoyed by Starsky even as he was worried like hell about him. “It’s not like it’s a habit.”</p><p>“How do you know? Maybe I switched my bed out with a chair weeks ago.”</p><p>“Yeah, sure. Come on.” He tugged at Starsky’s elbow and Starsky reluctantly let himself be dragged to his feet. “If you want to sleep in, you can do it in here.”</p><p>This wasn’t how Hutch had ever dreamed of having Starsky in his bed—still in his tight jeans, the ones so old the denim had almost lost its blue, fuzzily confused, belligerent. Well, the jeans might have turned up a time or two.</p><p>
  <em>Let it go. Concentrate on what you have, not no what you want. Concentrate on Starsky, for God’s sake, instead of your fantasy life. Worrying about your dreams is what got you here in the first place.</em>
</p><p>Good advice, he thought, half-sadly and half-sourly, because Starsky finally woke up enough to shake him off, so Hutch didn’t get to see him laid out on the bed anyway.</p><p>“I’m awake, I’m awake.” He rubbed his eyes again, harder this time. “Hey, Hutch, you ever notice that if you press down on your eyes real hard, you get these flashes of color that’re kinda like comic strips?”</p><p>“No, and I think I can live without the experience. Where do you want to go for breakfast?”</p><p>Starsky tilted his head from side to side, like he was trying to get a crick out of his neck. “Josie’s?”</p><p>Every dish at Josie’s Diner that didn’t start with a stick of butter started with a double-scoop of Crisco. Hush sighed. “Fine.”</p><p>***</p><p>No better way to start off a morning than with one of Josie’s blue plate specials. Today it was fluffy scrambled eggs, biscuits drowned in gravy, bacon crisped to perfection, velvety fried potatoes, and coffee and orange juice.</p><p>Hutch was eating yogurt and granola. Hutch had no sense of fun.</p><p>Starsky couldn’t decide whether to say anything about the gun. No, probably not. Hutch had looked embarrassed about it even when he’d been half out of his head, and asking might just make him clam up. Nobody clammed better than Hutch. And anyway, he’d already told Starsky that he hadn’t been sleeping. That could string anybody out and get them jumpy. It had just hurt him to see Hutch so panicky, a gray-white cast to his skin and fear all over his face. It wasn’t right.</p><p>He said, “So how’d you sleep last night?”</p><p>Hutch looked weirdly shamefaced. “Fine. Just fine.”</p><p>“Well, good.” Starsky twisted his head around again, to work the knot out of his neck. Nothing doing. “You should have some of these potatoes, Hutch, they’re terrific.”</p><p>Hutch shook his head.</p><p>“What’s eating you, anyway?” He licked a spot of grease off his fingers. “Just the insomnia? That’s what’s got you so wound up?”</p><p>Okay, so he was going to <em>allude </em>to the thing with the gun. He had to, if Hutch wasn’t gonna meet him halfway.</p><p>A glum bite of crunchy granola. Starsky would feel glum too, if he were eating that. “It’s not just insomnia, Starsk. It’s bad dreams, and I let them get the better of me.”</p><p>Insomnia was bad, but nightmares were worse. Starsky scooted forward in the booth, not stopping until their knees touched underneath the table. “What are they about?”</p><p>“Same thing yours are, if you’ve been having them. Giovanni’s. More or less.”</p><p>No, he’d never gotten around to having bad dreams about Giovanni’s—he’d mostly dealt with it until last night, when all the fear and uselessness had come flooding back in. But he was still pretty fresh-up on the experience of waking up with sweat-soaked sheets all around him and his mouth dry as a sucked-on straw. For a long time, those little star-marks on Hutch’s arm had been like a constellation following him around, there whenever Starsky had closed his eyes. His own personal night sky, when his memories of Hutch were supposed to be sunny.</p><p>“I know the feeling,” Starsky said. “And it helped, having me over there?”</p><p>“That gravy’s congealing.”</p><p>“Fuck the gravy.”</p><p>“I suppose you would, if we weren’t in public. Ordinarily.”</p><p>“You’re a laugh riot, Hutch. Sammy Grovner didn’t know what he was doing, encouraging you.”</p><p>“Encouraging <em>me</em>?”</p><p>“Come on,” Starsky said quietly.</p><p>“It helped.” Hutch tilted his spoon around in his granola. It was one of those parfait spoons, long-handled and shallow, and Hutch’s fingers looked good around it. Same way they always did. “But I wasn’t thinking about what it would be like for you. I’d like to blame the lack of sleep for that one.”</p><p>“Hell, what were you supposed to do? Tell me to sleep on the floor?”</p><p>“I was supposed to have not poured booze down your throat all night,” Hutch snapped. Now he’d bent that little spoon almost into a loop.</p><p>Starsky laughed. “Is that it? You got me drunk on purpose?” The idea of it filled him with a kind of exuberant dizziness. “Big deal. I—”</p><p><em>I get drunk on purpose at your place all the time, </em>he’d been ready to say. <em>I did it last night too, you know that? I like getting to where I just </em>got <em>to sleep on your sofa, no two ways about it. And I don’t have a good reason like nightmares, Hutch.</em></p><p>“I don’t mind,” he said. Some big finish. “The only thing I <em>minded </em>was sleeping on the sofa, and that’s just—” He waved his hand around. He didn’t know how to say it.</p><p>“Because it reminds you of when you got shot,” Hutch said, still looking like he felt rotten about it.</p><p>“Not so much of me getting shot. More like me having to lie there like a lump while you sat in a room with two gunmen.” He shrugged and took a sip of his coffee. Good strong coffee at Josie’s, and Starsky had laced it up so nice and sweet that just drinking it made him feel like his day had gotten better. “The bullet, you know, I could take it or leave it. Mostly leave it. But it wasn’t my biggest problem, except for getting me into the jackpot to start with. If you ask me, it sounds like we’re having about the same trouble.”</p><p>Hutch pointed at him. “Ah, except you weren’t having nightmares before.”</p><p>“So what? I could have been. It’s just that my fuse for that kind of thing was somewhere else than yours. I was up half the night on your couch thinking you could be dying in the other room—just because of a <em>couch</em>. Turning chicken over some furniture. You’ve got it bad, I’ve got it bad.”</p><p>Poor choice of words, but at least Hutch didn’t seem to notice it.</p><p>“Except you can just go home and sleep it off there, like you were going to do last night.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t have opened that door if I’d known you needed me to stay put.”</p><p>“For God’s sake, Starsky, I can handle it. It’s a better solution than having you sleep sitting up.”</p><p>“<em>What’s </em>a better solution? Because you haven’t come up with one yet.”</p><p>Hutch scowled at him. Starsky had another one of those bad, distracting out-of-body experiences—or too-much-in-body experiences—where he wanted to lean across the table and press his mouth to that scowl until it softened. But there was a <em>line</em>, even with them. He got to touch Hutch all the time, as long as his head was in the right place about it. He just didn’t get this, and that was nothing. Imagine not having Hutch at all—that would kill him. This was nothing.</p><p>“The solution is I start sleeping better,” Hutch said firmly.</p><p>“And money grows on trees and criminals turn themselves in and the streets are paved with candy.”</p><p>“Why would you want the streets to be paved with candy? You’d be walking on it. Your shoes would stick to it.” Hutch hooked Starsky’s orange juice glass over and sipped from it. “This isn’t bad.”</p><p>“The menu says ‘freshly squeezed.’”</p><p>“I’ll take a sleeping pill,” Hutch said, passing the glass back over. He was stone-faced now, so Starsky didn’t even have to try to figure out if Hutch remembered what a bad idea that would be.</p><p>“Your chair’s pretty comfortable, Hutch. I don’t mind it.”</p><p>“Sure. That’s why you keep cracking your neck to the side, because you’re so comfortable.”</p><p>“It’s just a kink. You want to work it out for me, be my guest. And I’ll let you pay for breakfast.” He speared his last piece of gravy-sopped biscuit and made a face: Hutch was right, he’d let the gravy get too cold. It had a skin on it now.</p><p>“Generous of you,” Hutch said dryly.</p><p>“I’m a giving guy.”</p><p>“Yeah, I’ve heard that about you,” Hutch said, and his mouth curved in the first real smile of the morning.</p><p>It was even more kissable than the grumpy scowl act, and that was saying something. Differently kissable, too. He’d start at the corner that had turned up first—</p><p>Except he wouldn’t. He wasn’t going to. And he’d be better off if he could keep from even thinking about it, something he used to be good at and now was getting worse at by the day, maybe even by the hour.</p><p>What if he did kiss Hutch? Not here, obviously, but when they were alone. It wasn’t like he thought Hutch would hit him for it. Hutch was okay with everybody that way. He was probably even better about it than Starsky was, because Starsky always used to feel like that kind of thing, that part of himself, wanted to mess up the life he had planned. Like the shark in <em>Jaws, </em>swimming around underneath him. It had felt dangerous, seeing a guy and liking what he saw.</p><p>But those had all been strangers, blank slates then scribbled over with all the things he’d heard and imagined. Hutch was different; Hutch was <em>Hutch</em>.</p><p>Anyway, Hutch took it in stride, somebody being queer. He’d be nice.</p><p>That was the risk, really. Hutch being <em>nice </em>about it. They matched each other heartbeat for heartbeat just the way they were, so why would it be a good idea to mess that up? Why should he tear his out of his chest just to drive home that there was one gap between them that was never, ever gonna be bridged? Just so they could both think about that every time they looked at each other?</p><p>No, no way. That kind of niceness would make them into strangers, and being a stranger to Hutch would be even worse than being an enemy.</p><p>Hutch had just finished laying out the cash on top of their check, and he shot Starsky a glance, like he could just about sense all the thoughts going through Starsky’s head. Some chance of that.</p><p>“You ready, partner?”</p><p>“Sure. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you haven’t caved on the whole chair thing, though.”</p><p>“Maybe we can just spend all day together and that’ll take care of the night,” Hutch said. As they stepped out of Josie’s, he put on his sunglasses: almost a relief from the baby blues.</p><p>“You think you can just soak up all your necessary vitamin Starsky during the daytime?”</p><p>“I think there’ve been times in the past when twenty-four hours with you have put me to sleep.”</p><p>“That’s just because you’re not a connoisseur of good conversation.” He unlocked the Torino. “So what do you want to do? You’re not kidding about spending the day together, are you?”</p><p>Hutch smiled. “No, I’m not kidding. Beach?”</p><p>The beach sounded perfect.</p><p>***</p><p>Starsky in swim trunks was a sight to drive away a lot of bad dreams. This pair was yellow with blue stripes, and Starsky had already gone into the water, so they were plastered wet against his skin. He lolled back on his towel, a cheap paperback splayed open across his stomach, the pages getting damp. Hutch would have saved it and dried it out if it’d looked like Starsky was really enjoying it. As it was, he didn’t want to spoil the picture: Starsky, asleep, in summertime. It was pretty damn hard to pay attention to his own book, under the circumstances.</p><p>They’d needed this. Hutch could feel some of the tension ebbing out of him, beaten into submission just by all this sun. He could lay out here all day, watching Starsky and the water, listening to the waves crash in. It was a better peace than any they’d had lately.</p><p>And it was giving Starsky a chance to make up some of those lost hours of sleep.</p><p>Would he really spend night after night in that chair if that’s what he thought Hutch needed?</p><p>Of course he would. He’d done it before, hadn’t he? Hutch wouldn’t have gotten through detox without him. He’d be dead somewhere with a needle in his arm, if it hadn’t been for Starsky. His whole life, everything he was—it had all hinged on Starsky’s willingness to babysit him for hour after muddled hour, to dry the sweat off him and change the sheets, to remind him who they were together.</p><p>
  <em>You were the one thing I needed more than heroin.</em>
</p><p>He settled his right hand down on Starsky’s shoulder; he could flip pages just fine with his left. He moved his thumb in little circles. He could still see traces of the suntan lotion, white on bronze, scented like cocoa butter and oranges. He rubbed it into Starsky’s skin and Starsky made a little <em>ahh</em> noise that Hutch liked more than was probably good for him.</p><p>He didn’t move his hand, though. Nobody was close enough to see, and he didn’t think Starsky would mind.</p><p>All right, so if their breakfast at Josie’s had made anything clear, it was that Starsky would fight tooth-and-nail to sleep in that damn chair if Hutch tried to stop him. Irresistible force meets unmovable Starsky.</p><p>Solution: Starsky’s place. If they bunked there for a few nights, Hutch could have the sofa—which he didn’t mind—and Starsky could be back in his own bed.</p><p>Which meant he could have just gotten <em>himself </em>drunk last night, at Starsky’s, and none of this would have happened. That ought to teach him something about strategizing on not enough sleep.</p><p>Starsky rolled over onto his stomach, just missing flattening out his book. Hutch took his hand away.</p><p>“Hmph-huh,” Starsky said against the towel, apparently in protest. He shrugged one shoulder—not the one Hutch had been touching, but the one now closest to him—and turned his head just enough to say, with his eyes still closed, “Gotta be fair, Hutch. Unless you’re the kind of guy who pets a dog on just one ear, and I don’t know that I’d wanna be partners with a guy like that.”</p><p>“Perish the thought,” Hutch said. He stroked Starsky’s other shoulder. “When are you going to learn to get all your sunscreen rubbed in?”</p><p>“When I turn into an easily-crisped fair-haired boy like you who burns up like a lobster if a cloud moves away from the sun.” He made another nice sound as Hutch’s thumb smoothed over him, and then he groaned. “Ah, I gotta get back to my book.”</p><p>“You don’t like it.”</p><p>“Yeah, but I got a hunch there’s a hot part coming. I got it used and the spine was already broken in this one spot, so I got a good feeling about it.” He sat up, Hutch’s hand briefly going to his back, bracing him—and then he let go. Starsky let him this time. “Here, let me have a try on your seat-mat thing, all right? You can lay down on my towel.”</p><p>“On your already damp towel. It’s good to have a buddy like you.”</p><p>He switched places with Starsky anyway, lying back and combing his fingers through the warm sand, hitting bits of shell along the way. Better kind of shells than the ones they usually dealt with.</p><p>He didn’t mean to drift off to sleep, but the sound of Starsky turning pages was too soft and rhythmic for him to stay awake for very long. He still had a lot of missing hours to make up for.</p><p>In his dream, he wasn’t back in Giovanni’s, and Starsky wasn’t in any kind of danger. It made for a nice change.</p><p>They were in the tomato, with Starsky driving. He turned that grin of his on Hutch with a look that said he knew just what it could do to him.</p><p>“You ought to test my concentration,” Starsky said. “It’d be like a driving test.”</p><p>Hutch felt a kind of molten heat spread through him. “What did you have in mind?”</p><p>“Well, I don’t want to be pushy. You must have your own ideas.”</p><p>He looked down at Starsky’s lap, at the bulge in the tight blue-and-yellow trunks. They were still soaked through—must have been dripping all over the car, Hutch thought distantly, and it was funny how he was dressed and Starsky wasn’t. But not funny enough for him to worry about it. He had other things on his mind.</p><p>He bent down over Starsky’s lap and rolled those wet trunks down. He breathed in the scent of saltwater and Starsky’s skin, musky and hot and close-up, so good it was almost heady.</p><p>Starsky’s hand settled in his hair, his fingers playing along the nape of Hutch’s neck. “I was hoping for this,” he said softly. “But I’m always hoping for you, Hutch.”</p><p>Starsky didn’t have to hope for him. He had him. He’d always had him.</p><p>But the dream slid sideways on him, like the Torino was spinning out and taking the two of them with it, and then he was back there all over again—back at Giovanni’s with some Italian ditty on the jukebox. He was sitting at one of the tables, looking down at his arm laid out across the checkered cloth, a needle jammed in just below a dingy latex tourniquet.</p><p>It was going to happen all over again. He was going to <em>need</em>—</p><p>And Starsky—he could hear Starsky, he could smell Starsky’s <em>blood </em>in the goddamn air—</p><p>“Hutch. Hutch. It’s okay.”</p><p>He rolled over and pressed his forehead against Starsky’s leg before he even realized he was awake—before he even realized he hadn’t been awake before. He was getting his dreams mixed up now, he thought wildly, his face up against the slick cloth of Starsky’s trunks: look at him waking up from a nightmare by plunging headfirst into one of the sweetest dreams he’d ever had. Starsky cradled the back of his head—simultaneously comforting him and adding salt to the wound, if he only knew it.</p><p>“Sorry,” he said, separating himself as soon as he could stop shaking. He deserved some kind of Congressional Medal for being able to pull away from Starsky just then. “Guess even you can’t chase all the nightmares away, Gordo.”</p><p>“Who says?” It was the gentlest bit of bluster Hutch had ever heard. “I woke you up, didn’t I? I think that ought to count.”</p><p>Maybe so. Besides, some part of him might have steered into the nightmare deliberately. Waking up next to Starsky when he’d had a nightmare was a cakewalk compared to the prospect of waking up next to him when he’d had a wet dream, especially given who’d been starring in it. He sat up, resting his head against his knees for a second.</p><p>“I know what you need,” Starsky said.</p><p>“I think what I need would come as a big surprise.”</p><p>Starsky frowned. “What?”</p><p>“Never mind. What’s your prescription, doctor?”</p><p>“Ice cream.”</p><p>Hutch raised his eyebrows.</p><p>“And beer. Beach food. And then we can go back to your place for scrambled eggs.”</p><p>“<em>After </em>the ice cream and beer. You’re doing things in reverse, Starsk.”</p><p>“I’m doing them geographically. We’re at the beach. There aren’t any scrambled eggs at the beach, and I know damn well there’s not any ice cream at your place unless it’s made with some crap I don’t even want to think about. Ah-ha, I got you there. It make sense, doesn’t it? We’re moving geographically. Come on, I’m buying you ice cream.”</p><p>Hutch let Starsky pull him up to his feet, and then he carried the collapsed beach chair while Starsky slung his towel over his arm.</p><p>“We go to the beach, and it’s your idea, and you don’t even go into the water,” Starsky said, rubbing at the edge of his towel.</p><p>“I like the sun.”</p><p>“I’m just saying your priorities are all mixed up, Hutch.”</p><p>“I’m not the one saying we should eat ice cream and then go eat scrambled eggs.”</p><p><em>Back to your place for scrambled eggs</em>, Starsky had said. Why did that ring a bell?</p><p>Dammit. That was what he’d suggested the night they’d gone to Giovanni’s, before Starsky had dug in his heels on wanting Italian food. Hutch stopped, throwing out his hand to catch Starsky.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“What happened at Giovanni’s,” Hutch said, ignoring how much he hated the name of that place by now, “that didn’t happen because you were in the mood for linguini and clams. You have to know that.”</p><p>“I was gonna have the veal. You were the one who ordered the linguini.”</p><p>“Starsky, I’ve never ordered linguini with clams in my life, and God knows, after that night, I never will, but none of that is the <em>point</em>. The point is that those men would have been there that night whether we’d turned up or not, and all that would have been different is they would have carried out their hit on Vic Monte—opening a nice little power vacuum for people to scramble over, and you know how much Dobey loves that—and <em>then </em>they would have wiped out everyone in the place. So much for Theresa and Sammy Grovner and—”</p><p>“All right, all right. I was just thinking you wouldn’t be having nightmares right now. But I didn’t realize I was buying a double-dip cone for a moral philosopher.”</p><p>“Single-dip.”</p><p>“Come on, Hutch, live a little.”</p><p>“If I let you buy me a double-dip,” Hutch said, thinking now was as good a time as any to bargain, “then we go to <em>your </em>place for the night, so you get to sleep in your own bed.”</p><p>Starsky considered this for about a second: “Nah. I like your place better.”</p><p>“You like my house better than your apartment,” Hutch said.</p><p>Starsky shrugged. “Yeah. Why do you think we hang out there all the time? I’m the one who drives, I drive us there. Even though you don’t have the common decency to keep your fridge stocked for me.” When they got up to the ice cream stall, he flashed Hutch one of those patented Starsky smiles before he turned to the vendor. “Two chocolate cones, please. <em>Double</em>-dip.”</p><p>“We’re out of chocolate.”</p><p>“You’re <em>out?”</em></p><p>The teenager in the battered U-Scream hat looked at them wearily, as if this was at least the hundredth time he’d had to say all this. “Why would I lie about that?”</p><p>“I’m not saying you’re <em>lying</em>, I’m just—”</p><p>“He’s just expressing dismay,” Hutch said smoothly. “Vanilla’s fine. You’ve got vanilla?”</p><p>“And beer,” Starsky said.</p><p>They walked away, each with one double-dip—Starsky—and single-dip—Hutch—cone in one hand and a plastic cup of beer in the other. The beer was half foam.</p><p>Still, Hutch couldn’t deny they both tasted good, especially after all that time in the sun.</p><p>“And another thing,” he said, picking up the thread of their old conversation like they’d never dropped it, “you had scrambled eggs for breakfast. Among about a dozen other things, but all the same—it’s repetitive. You owe your body more than that. We go to my place, <em>you </em>sleep in my bed, <em>I </em>sleep on the couch—”</p><p>“This whole thing’s got me feeling like Goldilocks.”</p><p>“—I make whatever <em>I </em>want for dinner, I don’t have nightmares, you don’t have flashbacks.” Unless he had the nightmares anyway—probably his dream on the beach meant that his whole plan was destined for failure regardless. But now, when he could have brought that up again, he didn’t. Never mind failing, it would be better just to be together.</p><p>***</p><p>What Hutch wanted to make for dinner turned out to be something with a lot of seaweed in it.</p><p>“You said you liked the beach,” Hutch said. All fake innocence.</p><p>“I said. I say a lot of things. It amazes me the ones you choose to listen to you and what you apparently get out of them.” Starsky let one of the limp strands of seaweed dangle off his fork. Even to him, it looked sort of forlorn, like it was down about how Hutch had taken it away from its home. “I should have had some more ice cream.”</p><p>He wound up pawing through Hutch’s fridge and cabinets, and eventually—he was pretty proud of himself for it—he wrangled up enough edible stuff to call it a night, even if half his dinner did end up being on these little wafer-thin crackers all covered in seeds he couldn’t recognize. All that finger food was good; it was <em>finicky</em>, it kept him occupied while he was thinking of saying something crazy.</p><p>“You know what we could do,” Starsky said. His heart broke into a gallop. Watch, it’d burst on him while he probably still had flaxseeds stuck in his teeth; watch him eat chili dogs for breakfast and then die with a bellyful of Hutch’s seaweed. “We could just both sleep in the bed.”</p><p>Hutch was drinking something dark green, and he practically stopped mid-swallow. “That’s—an idea.”</p><p>“Yeah. With your back, you shouldn’t be sleeping on the sofa. And doing it last night—” He was the one swallowing now. “I couldn’t fall asleep like that, Hutch.”</p><p>“I know,” Hutch said quietly.</p><p>“I don’t ever want to be laid out like that when you need me.”</p><p>“If the plan is for you to never get shot again, I’m on board with that. No hesitation here.” He went back to his tall glass of lawn trimmings; when he spoke again, he was looking somewhere over Starsky’s left shoulder, which wasn’t like him at all. “All right, Starsk. If you’re sure you don’t mind.”</p><p><em>Buddy, if you knew how much I didn’t mind—</em>but he smothered that thought where it was. This was just the best way to handle things so they wouldn’t be shuffling around all night.</p><p>In practical terms, sleeping next to Hutch was no different from riding in the car next to him; it wasn’t any different from any of the other ways they wound up close. They <em>were </em>close.</p><p>“I don’t mind.” His voice had dropped low, like Hutch’s.</p><p>The whole rest of the night seemed to go by like a speeded-up film reel, like the two of them were moving in double-time. TV and talk and showers to wash off the sand. Starsky had already stripped down to his undershirt and a too-long pair of Hutch’s pajama pants, ready for bed—ready to go to bed with <em>Hutch</em>—when Hutch said:</p><p>“You’re rubbing your neck again.”</p><p>He was. He’d been doing it off and on all day to the point where he wasn’t even thinking about it. He had his thumb dug into one of the muscles there, trying to work out what felt like that one knot the guy had had to cut with a sword.</p><p>“It’s just stiff.”</p><p>“Want me to give it a try?” He gestured at one of the kitchen chairs.</p><p>Sure, why not? Starsky sat down, and Hutch’s warm hands landed on his shoulders.</p><p>Hutch started the massage there, and he was good enough at it that it only took a couple of seconds for Starsky to start feeling like a puddle of melted butter. He couldn’t even get it together to remind Hutch that it was his neck that was hurting him, not his shoulders—and then it didn’t matter, because Hutch was moving up, smoothing his thumbs up about an inch apart from each other. Then it was just one wide hand, cradling his neck, working him until it was impossible to remember he’d ever hurt in the first place.</p><p>“Good?”</p><p>“Best I’ve felt in my whole life,” Starsky said. “You ought to set up shop somewhere, babe.”</p><p>Hutch leaned down, his voice a warm puff against Starsky’s ear: “If I went on the open market, you couldn’t afford me.” Then he stiffened, straightening up and pulling back, suddenly cool. “I have to brush my teeth. I stay up too goddamn late when you’re here—dammit, we have to <em>work </em>in the morning.”</p><p>He breezed past Starsky on his way to the bathroom, and Starsky, trying to figure out what the hell was going on with him, said, “No kidding, if you opened up a little massage parlor, I wouldn’t get a friends-and-family discount?”</p><p>Hutch just shut the bathroom door without saying anything. Who shut the door to brush his teeth, anyway?</p><p>He knew why he would have backed right off if he’d just laid that open market line on Hutch, but—</p><p>Something crystallized inside him, a whole lot of looks and silences and moments suddenly turning solid enough to handle, speared up together like a bunch of rock candy. So fucking breakable, like it could shatter any second or just dissolve to some kind of sweet nothing, but—right now it was holding together. Right now, chain of impressions or not, it was real enough that he could almost see the light reflecting off it, glints here and there of possibility.</p><p>Hutch could—</p><p>It was possible, wasn’t it? Who knew what guys got up to in Duluth? Or college? Not Starsky. Maybe things happened there the way they’d happened sometimes in ’Nam: he hadn’t risked it back then, but he’d seen it around. What was a handjob between friends? And even if Hutch, like him, had never done a damn thing, even if Hutch had never <em>wanted </em>anything, somebody could change their mind, couldn’t they? How many times had Starsky met a girl and not seen how pretty she was at first? Sometimes you had to get to know a person before the way they smiled twisted a corkscrew into your heart. He hadn’t wanted Hutch right out of the starting gate. Wanting any guy like that had always just felt like a word on the tip of his tongue, something he could feel nudging at him, something he hadn’t quite come up with. He hadn’t even thought about it much.</p><p>And then it had all just reared up and flattened him. Because it was Hutch. And that right there—that wasn’t any rock candy. That was a diamond kind of realization, unbreakable and forever.</p><p>Maybe it wasn’t so farfetched to think it had been a little like that for Hutch. It wasn’t like they didn’t love each other silly anyway.</p><p>But he took a deep breath, turning his head from side to side just to feel the now-easy movement, just to remember Hutch’s hands up there. Exhale. Whatever it was, it was a bad idea to make it matter tonight. Tonight was supposed to be about making sure Hutch got some sleep.</p><p>When Hutch finally finished the world’s longest session of teeth-brushing, Starsky just said, “Minty fresh and ready for bed?”</p><p>He half-thought Hutch would tell him that he’d take the couch after all. Truth be told, he was kind of hoping for it, because that little last-minute pivot would tell him more than anything else. But Hutch looked nothing but calm and normal as he nodded. “Sure. I just can’t shake the feeling you’re going to wind up stealing all the covers.”</p><p>He was so casual about it now that Starsky felt a little of his hopefulness slip away.</p><p>He went light, trying to match Hutch for casualness. “If covers weren’t meant to move around, they’d tack them to the bed.”</p><p>So with that as a good night, they went to bed—to Hutch’s bed, together. He lay down and watched Hutch settle in: no matter how much sun they’d gotten that day, Hutch still looked a little haggard in the unfussy lamplight. He’d let his worry run him into the ground, the dummy. He should have gotten Starsky out here sooner.</p><p>Looking at Hutch there in the dark swept everything else under the rug. It all just fell under tenderness, anyway, and tenderness was what he wanted to give Hutch right now. He reached out and fitted his hand in a curve around Hutch’s arm.</p><p>“No bad dreams,” he said softly. “I’m fine. If you need to, you can just wake up and see that anytime. And you can go to sleep knowing I’m right here.”</p><p>“Yeah.” The word was almost just pure exhalation, like Hutch was finally letting go of the same breath that had been trapped in his chest since Giovanni’s.</p><p>It wasn’t hard to lie in the same bed with him, not then. They were just what they always were—together. The location didn’t matter much.</p><p>He wound up staying awake until Hutch had dropped off. He couldn’t have said just how he knew when that was, just by listening to the way Hutch was breathing, because he had his eyes closed most of the time, and he guessed Hutch did too. But he knew. And when Hutch had finally drifted off, Starsky let himself drift too.</p><p>That night, nothing woke them up.</p><p>***</p><p>Hutch doled out those nights with Starsky like they were drops of water in the desert. He only let himself have four of them, in the end. Four nights, with only one lousy nightmare among them. He’d had that on the second night, when he’d woken up glued to sweat-soaked sheets, his heart pounding so hard and fast it felt like a drill. Sure, that had been bad—but then he’d been right there with Starsky. And the next two nights, there’d been nothing at all.</p><p>If he’d dragged it out any longer than that, he would’ve just been—indulging. And Starsky was supposed to be the hedonist, not him.</p><p>Self-control, that was what it was all about. Not self-denial, exactly: he wouldn’t go that far. Just … control. He thought that all things considered, he was doing pretty well on that front. Four nights was easily within reason—for them, even if no one else would have thought so.</p><p>On the fifth day, Starsky said, “You want me to bring over some beer?” That had, without either of them fixing it, turned into a kind of code, one they used even when they were alone. Which made it, Hutch supposed, more of a dodge than a code, like neither of them wanted to talk about it too directly. They avoided the obvious here just like they avoided it everywhere else.</p><p>Hutch shook his head. “Things have been fine. I think I’m over it.”</p><p>“Like a cold,” Starsky observed.</p><p>“The Giovanni flu. How are you doing on sofas?”</p><p>“Hard to say. It’s not like I go home and sleep on mine.” He gave Hutch a crooked smile, but there was something behind it, something Hutch couldn’t parse. “I’ll let you know if we have to double up the next time I drink too much at your place.”</p><p><em>Self-control, </em>Hutch reminded himself. <em>And </em>plan <em>so that that doesn’t get any harder than it is now.</em></p><p>Right now, he didn’t know what it was like to share a bed with Starsky without waiting for a bad dream to come along. Even speculating about what that would be like was bad enough. It was like he saw Starsky’s curls flattened out against his pillow every time he closed his eyes.</p><p>“I’ll make sure to cut you off, then,” he said.</p><p>Whatever had been behind Starsky’s smile didn’t seem to be there anymore. Starsky just said, “Nobody likes a bartender with principles, you know that?”</p><p>All that lasted a couple of months. They drank a little less then, stopping their unwinding before they came all the way undone, like Starsky didn’t want to push it with seeing whether he had to get reacquainted with the sofa or else share again, like—like kids sleeping over. Hutch tried to forget the pink pillow-crease on Starsky’s cheek in the mornings. He tried that, and he mostly succeeded at it, until Jennings. Until the aftermath of Jennings—a little while <em>into </em>the aftermath, even. Starsky had gone from looking like death back to looking pretty good, and then he’d taken a hard left turn for no reason Hutch had been able to work out. It was like the color seeped out of him a little more every day, and he wouldn’t answer any damn questions about it.</p><p>“I’m fine, Hutch.” He pushed his lips together: nobody talked more when he was excited, and nobody ever clammed up better when he wanted to. Stubborn as a mule. Even the smile didn’t soften his mouth up any—he was trying to be wry, but it was just a hard flex of muscle. “Jeez, a guy spends twenty-three hours knocking at death’s door and you want to treat him like he’s made out of china.”</p><p>That was about all Hutch could get out of him. He wasn’t used to Starsky stonewalling him, and he didn’t like it.</p><p>He tried a different tactic. “Dobey asked me about you. If you were still having stomach pains or anything.”</p><p>“Yeah? Maybe he can book me for a spot in the Caribbean after all.”</p><p>“No, I doubt it, because Huggy wouldn’t go for it. You think I haven’t been noticed how many takeout containers he’s sent your way lately? He’s almost as worried about you as I am.”</p><p>“Hey, there are other travel agents.” It was cloudy, but he put his sunglasses on, like he just wanted to keep Hutch from seeing his eyes. “Huggy’s gonna own half of the city someday, he can live without my business if I’m gonna wind up paying him rent. He ought to be mayor.”</p><p>He spun that into a steady stream of chatter about how the two of them should go into business with Huggy once they retired, and Hutch, not knowing what else to do, sat back and let Starsky build this imaginary future like he was putting together a bunch of Lincoln Logs. According to Starsky, they’d own a restaurant someday, unless it was a hotel or a fairground like Coney Island. Or maybe a toy shop.</p><p>It took one more night for the dam to finally break.</p><p>It was ten after ten when Starsky knocked on his door.</p><p>“You have a key,” Hutch said, letting him in. The strangeness of Starsky bothering to knock made him itchy somehow—usually they just walked in on each other, at least if there was no sign there was other company.</p><p>“Dracula caught me on my way from the car,” Starsky said. He looked pallid enough that that could have been true. “Now that I’m a bloodsucker, I need an invitation.”</p><p>“Well, you’ve got a standing one. What’s going on?”</p><p>Starsky said, “I think I need a beer.”</p><p>“Okay—”</p><p>“And then one more and then one more and—you know.”</p><p>Hutch wasn’t sure he did. “You want to get drunk?”</p><p>“No,” Starsky said.</p><p>There was a little pocket of silence, a gulp of air where words should have been. Hutch had time for the world to lurch around him. What if the poison’s effects hadn’t gone away? What if the damage had been too much?</p><p>But then Starsky said, “I just need to stay the night with you.”</p><p>Hutch could have laughed, but, thank God, he didn’t. He didn’t know if Starsky would have forgiven him for it, at least not right then. “That’s all? God, Starsk, I thought you were—” His throat closed up around the word <em>dying. </em>“Sick.”</p><p>“No.” Gray as he’d looked over the last few weeks, Starsky had been holding himself together all that time, but now Hutch heard the tiniest fracture in his voice, like Starsky was going to break under the strain. “No, I’m just <em>tired</em>, Hutch. God, I feel like I can’t even think straight anymore. I wake up a hundred times a night thinking I’m gonna find Bellamy standing over me. And I thought, well, you stopped having nightmares, didn’t you? When you had me over here before? I know you didn’t want to keep doing it, but I thought maybe… just for a night.”</p><p>“Whatever you need,” Hutch said. “However many nights you need it. Whenever.”</p><p>It didn’t matter if it killed him to sleep side-by-side with Starsky and not hold him. It tore him up even worse to see Starsky like this—to think that Starsky felt like he had to <em>ask </em>for this, when Hutch would have given it to him without a second thought.</p><p>But he’d asked Starsky. Not even asked, the first time—he’d maneuvered him into it.</p><p>All the things they’d done with each other, for each other, and now they’d both balked at sharing a bed, even though they’d both needed it. He knew why it had been too much for him—so close yet so damn far—but he didn’t know what Starsky was thinking.</p><p>“You don’t have to ask,” Hutch said softly.</p><p>Starsky stuck his hands in his jacket pockets. “You wanted to call it quits.” It was almost a mumble.</p><p>Hutch had no way to answer that. He’d never wanted to stop anything less in his whole life.</p><p>Had Starsky wanted—</p><p>Hutch heard a kind of echo: <em>Nobody likes a bartender with principles, you know that?</em></p><p>He grabbed onto that thought and held it. Maybe. Maybe.</p><p>“Come on,” he said, tugging gently at Starsky’s arm. “Let’s get you into bed.”</p><p>Starsky dug his heels in. “Not right now. I’ll just go with you, when you’re ready. No way were you planning on going to bed at ten at night.”</p><p>“Now is as good a time as any,” Hutch said firmly.</p><p>That got him a little smile. “You’re soft, Hutch. That’s what this is. I show up here with my big blue eyes and you just roll over.”</p><p>True enough. “Yeah,” he said, like he was joking. “You’ve got me in the palm of your hand. Come on.”</p><p>Starsky hadn’t brought anything with him, and Hutch wondered if that was because he’d really thought he might use that “too drunk to drive home” alibi or because he’d just been too tired to even think of packing an overnight bag. It didn’t matter. They’d worn each other’s clothes before. He got Starsky into some pajamas, stuck a spare toothbrush in his hand, and went and got changed himself.</p><p>Starsky met him in the doorway of the bedroom. He was holding onto the doorframe like he was afraid he’d fall down. “I don’t want this to sound funny, Hutch, but if you’re just gonna stay there a while and then get up, I’d just as soon wait until you’re really tired. I just—I don’t want to wake up and be alone.” He let out a short, bitter laugh, and it sounded so unnatural from him that it hurt to hear it. “Listen to me. I sound like I’m a kid who needs a teddy bear.”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter.”</p><p>“I thought about trying it with girls, picking up a date for the night, but I think it’s gotta be you.” Another weak smile. “Plus, I won’t scare you off right away if I wake up screaming.”</p><p>“You won’t scare me off at all. And you won’t wake up alone. If I can’t sleep, that’s what books are for.”</p><p>“Yeah? That was, what’s his name, Gutenberg’s goal, you think? Giving a guy something to read in bed?”</p><p>“Sure. Most people don’t know Gutenberg also invented the bedside lamp.”</p><p>“It’s not nice to tell lies to somebody this tired,” Starsky said. “I can’t keep anything straight right now. I’m going to wind up getting that wrong in some trivia contest.”</p><p>“Starsk, how many trivia contests do you enter?”</p><p>Starsky seemed to be seriously thinking the question over. “Five,” he said finally. “They have them on the radio sometimes.”</p><p>“Go to bed, hotshot.”</p><p>He did, and Hutch stretched out beside him. Starsky shut his eyes almost immediately, and Hutch looked at the bruises underneath them and wondered how he hadn’t noticed them until now. He touched Starsky there without meaning to—he just suddenly saw his thumb just above Starsky’s cheekbone.</p><p>Starsky opened his eyes. He didn’t seem to think what Hutch was doing was weird. “Yeah, the luggage I’m hauling around under there. The dark circles. You didn’t miss anything, babe. I hid ’em. Tried every folk remedy in the books—put ice on them, put teabags on them. After a while, I didn’t know whether I was supposed to see with them or drink them.”</p><p>“You bought tea bags?” Hutch said, amused despite himself.</p><p>“Yep. You can’t pigeonhole me, boy. I got layers.” He closed his eyes again.</p><p>Hutch did read, or at least he held a book and turned the pages—doing it at a glacial speed so they wouldn’t rustle and wake up Starsky. He couldn’t have described the plot if his life had depended on it.</p><p>He’d call Starsky in sick in the morning. He could call them both in sick, even—Dobey let them do that sometimes, as long as things weren’t too busy.</p><p>“Neither of you are married,” Dobey had said once, briefly, as some kind of explanation for what Hutch knew had to be at least a bending of the department rules. “Sometimes you have to have someone there to look out for you. And you and Starsky—your partnership doesn’t stop when you clock out at the end of the day. That’s a good thing.”</p><p>It was. Always had been, always would be.</p><p>Starsky bolted awake then, twisting to the side and batting at something—someone—who wasn’t there.</p><p>Hutch didn’t know if catching hold of him right then would lead to anything but a bloody nose, so he just tried talking him out of it. “It’s okay, Starsk. He’s not here. Bellamy’s dead and buried, and Jennings is never, ever getting out. It’s over. And I’m here. I’m the only one here.”</p><p>Starsky looked at him, his eyes bleary for a second before they cleared. “How long did I make it that time?”</p><p>Hutch glanced at the clock. “Forty-five minutes, I think. I’m sorry, buddy.”</p><p>“Don’t be. Hell, it’s better than it was before. I’ve had nights where I barely got twenty minutes before it was like a fire alarm went off in my head.” He tried to relax again, but Hutch could see he was shaking a little. “I guess sleeping me’s still not smart enough to know you’re here.”</p><p>Hutch hesitated. When he made the offer, though, he was sure that he was making it for Starsky’s sake and not just for his own. “I could—I could put an arm around you.”</p><p>Dammit. No matter how he’d meant it, that little stammer had given him away. It was like a neon sign showing what he wasn’t saying, what he was afraid Starsky would think—what he was afraid Starsky would <em>know</em>, since it was the truth.</p><p>Any explanation he could give just dried up in his mouth.</p><p>Starsky was staring at him now, his lips parted just a little. He looked like hell. He looked beautiful. He was going to sit up, Hutch thought, and put his hands in his hair for a second; he was going to say something that would deny he’d realized anything, something that would give Hutch some dignity.</p><p>Starsky said, “If I’ve got this wrong, we can just say I was too tired to know what I was doing.”</p><p>He laid his hand on Hutch’s cheek and leaned in and kissed him.</p><p>It was soft and warm, not rushing anything.</p><p>When Starsky finally pulled away, he said, “What do you think, Hutch? Did I know what I was doing?”</p><p>Hutch touched the tip of his tongue to his lips. He could taste Starsky now, more fully than he’d ever tasted him in any of his dreams. His voice was unsteady as he said, “I think we’ve never had a better idea in our lives.”</p><p>Starsky made an impossible kind of noise, like a little whoop of joy, and Hutch broke into laughter and pulled him close, holding him the way he’d wanted to do for almost longer than he could remember.</p><p>Starsky was saying something against Hutch’s shoulder, and Hutch reluctantly eased back enough so he could hear him.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I said, I kept thinking you’d taste like beer and vanilla ice cream, like a float. ’Cause that’s what we had the first time we were in bed together. I mean, except for the seaweed, but I kept trying to block that part out. I’ve been crazy about vanilla ever since, thinking it’d taste like you.”</p><p>Hutch felt like someone had turned on a bunch of lights inside him, like he’d gone incandescent. He couldn’t believe Starsky had been thinking about this as long as he had. And all of a sudden he remembered Starsky, weeks back, eating a vanilla ice cream cone, licking into it with a look of longing and delight that could have gotten him arrested.</p><p>“But you,” Starsky went on, “you’re even better. I just couldn’t dream you up.”</p><p>“I was thinking the same thing.”</p><p>Starsky smiled. He didn’t look quite so exhausted anymore—just comfortable and pleasantly sleepy. “Let’s do that again, then. Give me something to dream on.”</p>
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